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“So why’s Mr. Wayne doing this?”
The driver—or, the man had introduced himself as the Wayne family butler. Dick didn’t think butlers normally chauffeured. He had the impression they mostly opened doors for people while wearing formal black suits with a little white towel hanging over their arm, but what did he know about butlering?—merely raised a finely-shaped gray eyebrow at him through the rearview mirror in reply.
Dick turned his head to the side to watch as the homes passing outside the dark-tinted car window grew larger and statelier, with more space between them the farther outside the city they drove. A far cry from the narrow gray apartment buildings surrounding the orphanage downtown, each hugging tight to the brick of the next, and always bathed in cool and gloomy shadow by their taller neighbors, even at the height of the day.
Not like either environment was all that familiar to him before these last few miserable months—not being the cramped but cozy trailers and railcars he grew up in, always with a new backdrop every few days to weeks at the most.
“It’s okay if it’s a Little Orphan Annie thing,” he said. “I mean it. He gets to play Warbucks—feel good about helping a kid and look good for doing it—and I get way better food and clothes and stuff than if I’d had to stay in the orphanage, or with any other family that’d adopt me. It’s not like it’s a bad deal for me.”
Sister Mary Elizabeth probably couldn’t have stopped Mr. Wayne from taking in Dick if the billionaire had been really set on it, which he seemed to be, but she would have put up a hell of a fight if she felt like it was necessary. She had been a bit apprehensive, he’d seen that, but she’d seemed to think he would be okay with this Wayne guy, and Dick trusted Sister Mary. She wasn’t like the other adults who only ever told him how things were gonna be and never asked him what he wanted, since that fatal night.
“A lot of the kids at St. Jude’s are… “ Dick kept his shoulders purposefully relaxed, his breathing and tone even, as he idly daydreamed a small figure running across rooftops and treetops and power lines beside them to keep pace with the car, to distract himself. Just for fun, he placed the figure in red, green, and yellow—the Flying Graysons’ colors.
“I don’t know the right word for it, but… angry. Like they can’t trust that anything’s good anymore.”
“Cynical, I believe is the word you are looking for, Master Richard.”
“Yeah, that sounds right. But Mom told me a thing can be selfish and still be good, so…” he trailed off, and wondered if he should apologize for calling Mr. Wayne selfish (rather than selfless, like the social worker had said) for taking him in, but he didn’t think he was wrong, so he didn’t.
The butler quietly snorted, which caused Dick to turn back toward him in surprise.
“Selfish, yes. I rather agree. But your mother wasn’t wrong.”
Dick scowled. ‘Wasn’t wrong.’ He hated that phrasing. Like the expectation was that she was wrong (because she was a woman, because she was “just a carny,” because she was Roma, take your pick), but against all odds it turned out she actually knew what she was talking about! ‘Gimme a break, why not just say she was right?’
“Did you know Mr. Wayne is also an orphan?” The question broke through his thoughts. “He lost both his parents at the same age you are now. Also at the hands of criminals.”
That was certainly interesting, but Dick waited to form any conclusions until the man finished talking, because he seemed to have more to say.
“I understand your circumstances are still very different,” the man—Dick was starting to wish he’d been paying more attention when he introduced himself. He thought his name maybe started with a P?—met his eyes once again through the rearview mirror. ”But I believe Mr. Wayne realized very quickly that all the money in the world means nothing to a grieving child when all one wants is family.”
Dick turned back to the window, crossing his arms and letting his head thump down against the glass. “I still have a family,” he muttered sourly. Mr. Haley and all the others wanted him. It wasn’t fair that some city he didn’t even live in got to decide they weren’t good enough, but a stranger he’d never met was. “You just won’t let me stay with them.”
The man gave a quiet sigh. “I know this isn’t fair to ask, Master Richard, but please allow Mr. Wayne to be selfish. Let him try to put right what he couldn’t in his own childhood with you. I promise that he wants you to be happy.”
“If he wanted me to be happy, he’d take me back to Haley’s! If he wanted to put things right, then Zucco would be in jail, or better yet–!” he cut himself off, only the little voice in his head that belonged to Sister Mary stopping his thoughts from going down a dark path he knew he couldn’t easily step off of.
The rest of the drive passed in silence.
The boy seemed impressed, even a little excited, by the manor, Alfred was relieved to note as he showed him the den with its cozy chairs and enormous fireplace, the in-home theater and the indoor pool, the second smaller kitchen where Alfred usually prepared their meals (and where he extended the invitation for Master Richard to join him later that evening to bake some cookies).
Maybe that would wear off—Alfred suspected a young, rambunctious child used to a nomadic lifestyle might soon find the manor something closer to a gilded cage—but for now, he seemed pleased to explore his new environs.
Until, that was, they ran into Master Bruce in the library.
He’d been fretting about the introduction, Alfred knew. Practicing what to say, how to act, until even Alfred—who had made it very clear that Bruce could ill afford to mess up with the doubtless emotionally volatile child after the terrible experience he’d gone through, and then ever hope to have a relationship with him—had grown exasperated and informed his pseudo-son he had done all the preparing it was possible to do.
It seemed to start off fine. Richard was blandly polite, a little nervous, a little sullen, mostly anxious and impatient to escape the conversation, all hidden under a performer’s smile. Until, in the middle of a sentence, as Bruce described how breakfast was usually served a little later on weekends and they could eat in the sunroom if he’d like, the boy went quite pale.
As the blood drained from his face and his eyes went wide, he took a step back, then another, and then a third, anchoring Alfred’s body between his own and Master Bruce.
He gulped, a brittle smile dancing on the edge of rage and terror breaking over his face.
“I’d like to go to my room, now,” he said stiffly, not making eye contact, gaze settled steady somewhere just to the side of Bruce at about mid-chest height—who gaped, stricken, like a fish.
“O-of course, I’ll show you to—”
“NO,” the boy practically shouted, taking a half-step further back, before squaring his shoulders, even as he began to tremble faintly, hands shaking in fists at his sides. “Mr. Pennyworth will take me.”
Bruce turned to Alfred helplessly, but his own shoulders sagged as he quickly conceded. “Of course. Whatever makes you most comfortable, chum.”
As Bruce turned to flee the room, he stopped only as Alfred called after him, his voice cold and stern. “Master Bruce? Proceed to the decontamination chamber downstairs immediately. I will be very disappointed if you make another appearance having rushed through the process, no matter how eager you are to welcome Master Richard. Procedures are in place for a reason.”
Bruce nodded, and disappeared through the doors. The butler sighed, and hand hovering over but not quite touching the boy’s shoulder, began steering him out the opposite doors back into the main foyer, up the grand staircase, and down the right-hand hall to the bedrooms in the family wing.
When he stopped them in front of a room, and placed his hand on the knob to open it, Dick stopped him. “Did Mr. Wayne pick out this bedroom for me?” he asked briskly.
“He did,” Alfred confirmed.
The boy’s eyes roved the hall, before finally landing on the door across from his own, and two over. He pointed. “I want that one instead.” His voice only quavered a little bit, projecting confidence his demand would be obeyed that he clearly didn’t entirely feel.
Alfred removed his hand from the doorknob, and turned to the new room without hesitation. “That is entirely fine, Master Richard.”
The door opened to reveal a room patterned in a dull gold wallpaper with a dizzying design like that of sprouting mushrooms as viewed through a kaleidoscope, a large persian rug in a shade of red faded almost to pink spread across a hardwood floor, and a bed with a heavy green velvet canopy straight out of a Dickens novel. Besides that, there was a nightstand, a chaise, and a dresser with a large mirror hanging over it, all covered in dust sheets. A table lamp with a tasseled shade sat unplugged on the floor beside the nightstand.
Alfred briskly walked over to the window, pushing aside the floor-length drapes to let in the light. “A bit gaudy," he mused dryly. "But we can redecorate however you see fit. For now, please wait a few moments to allow me to fetch some towels and toiletries for you,” he said, opening a door that Dick had thought was a closet to reveal an en-suite bathroom, and flipping on the light switch.
“Mister Wayne has a lab in the basement,” the man added with distaste as he tore off the dust sheets from the furniture, “and occasionally works with dangerous chemicals in the course of his research. For safety purposes, you won’t have access to the lab, but since I fear Master Bruce may have exposed you to something anyway in his haste to get upstairs, I will ask you to give yourself a thorough scrubbing before coming down for lunch. I will be back momentarily.”
“The key.”
“Pardon?” Alfred turned back to the boy, who was sitting on the edge of the bed, testing the softness, with his lone duffle bag of belongings plopped down beside him.
“Is there a key to this room?” The boy repeated, seeming a little more settled now that he’d been accommodated thus far.
“Ah. No, there is no key. The door only locks from the inside, Master Richard. But if you’d like, we can install a new lock tomorrow, and I assure you, you will have the only key.”
The boy stood to follow Alfred to the door and examined the knob from both sides to be sure, before nodding, ushering the butler out, and closing the door behind him, the soft click of the lock turning immediately after.
Alfred decided to get fresh towels from the laundry room on the first floor rather than the linen closet at the end of the hall to give the boy a little more time to breathe.
Halfway back up the stairs the security alarms went off.
Bruce dashed out onto the lawn to discover his new ward dangling from the lip of the window, tennis shoes scrambling for purchase against the brick, his duffle lying on the ground two stories below like a dead bird.
Afraid to leave lest Dick fall in the time it took him to run inside, upstairs, and break down the door, he shouted panicked encouragement up to the boy, who, after tentatively shuffling to the side and trying for a handhold in the grout, eventually managed to haul himself back up and into the room before Alfred had to break out the fire ax to take down the door.
He later explained, openly hostile but clearly shaken at a new fear of falling that had never burdened him before his parents’ death, that he thought he’d be able to climb down and would have managed just fine if only Bruce wasn’t screaming at him and breaking his concentration.
The next few weeks went poorly. Dick avoided being alone in the same room as Bruce at all costs, and tolerated Alfred only with suspicion, ignoring even the offered baking lesson he’d so happily accepted that first day before the disastrous encounter with his new foster father.
But Alfred had caught the boy hiding behind furniture and door frames in order to spy on Bruce as he moved about the mansion, even when he was occupied with nothing more stimulating than napping in a lazyboy or reading the morning paper. On at least one occasion each, he’d found the boy rifling through drawers in Bruce’s study and bedroom, hunting for something, although what wasn’t clear, possibly even to the boy.
He’d even once caught Dick on the landline in the kitchen, following the curling plastic cord to where he was crouched under a shelf in the pantry, whispering frantically, one hand cupped over his mouth, into the receiver, “Sister Mary, you have to come get me out of here! You were wrong, and I can’t explain, but you have to believe me, he’s bad! He’s really, really bad!”
That had resulted in several visits from the social worker that were a pain to deal with. He had even, with Master Bruce’s blessing, invited the Sister to their home for tea, which extended to dinner, and then an invitation to stay the night (which she had not accepted, as she had to return to the orphanage) with as much time alone with Dick as she felt she needed to address his concerns.
The boy was still upset when she left, well after the sun had set, but as he had no bruises or other evidence to suggest Master Bruce was abusing or mistreating him, Alfred hopefully had convinced the woman the call was some combination of nightmares stirred up by the boy’s trauma and the stress over the move to a new home, combined with (suggested as gently as possible) lies the boy felt he needed to make, as he still hadn’t given up on trying to run back to the circus, and a permanent placement with Bruce Wayne would hinder that, evidenced by his first escape attempt.
Still, his reactions were troubling, even after Alfred had checked the security footage for the umpteenth time, had the entire manor aired out and sanitized, and forced Master Bruce to remove his nighttime operations to the secondary base in the bunker under the warehouse by the docks.
“Master Bruce, I have supported you down a path you know I don’t agree with. I would have preferred you enjoy a happy, normal life, and I regret each and every night that I wasn’t able to give that to you without Thomas and Martha beside us.
“I had hoped that the weight of responsibility of a young life in your care would provide you with a new path, a new reason to keep moving forward. But this isn’t working.”
Since Alfred had caught him too many times, Dick had had to get sneakier. Good thing, too, since there was no way they would be having this conversation if they knew he was eavesdropping.
“The boy is obviously terrified, and I won’t stand back and let you continue to torture him or yourself with this farce any longer! Send him back. Let someone else take him in. Give him a chance to grow up in a normal house, with ordinary parents and boys his own age, where maybe he might have the chance to step outside the shadow of tragedy! Lord knows he doesn’t need yours on top of his own.”
Wayne breathed out a bitter chuckle. “You’re a fool if you think that boy will grow up normal, Alfred, no matter whose roof he’s under.”
“With all due respect, Sir, he’s not you. I thought you wanted to do this to give him the chance you never had!”
“I do. And I am. Because he’s exactly like me, Alfred. I watched the tapes from the Phantom when you brought him here. He doesn’t need a father who will play catch with him in the yard, although if he wanted to, I’d be more than happy. What he needs is Zucco punished.”
Dick had to stifle a gasp behind his hand.
“That’s what I never got. And although it took longer than I hoped, I can give it to him. I found Zucco.” Dick stiffened, his pulse pounding so loudly in his ears he almost missed the next words. “–solve the issue of Dick’s fear of me, I can round him up as soon as tonight.”
A chair creaked. Then, “So what do you say, Dick? Let’s talk.”
“Do you know what I do, Dick?”
Dick was still standing well outside of lunging range, so Bruce had to raise his voice a little more than he usually would in a conversation, but they were in a room together, which was an improvement.
Dick looked wary, but eventually answered. “Well, you’re a billionaire, but it's all your dad’s money or something, right? That’s what the kids at St. Jude’s said. So, whatever you want all day, I guess.”
Bruce actually laughed, a real laugh. “Well, my dad was a doctor, but not even doctors make that much money. You’re right that the majority of the family wealth is passed down—made four generations back, now, with the founding of Gotham—but I do own a company, Wayne Enterprises.”
“Oh. Yeah, I’ve heard of them. Like cameras and TVs and stuff?” As usual, Dick’s gaze failed to stay on Bruce’s face, drifting down to the side. He looked a little nauseous, and his hands began clenching into fists at his sides.
“Yes. Consumer electronics, and a lesser-known aspect of the business, but just as important, software for government and military applications. But I’ve acquired a few other unrelated companies in my tenure as CEO, and so I mostly let Mr. Fox run W.E. for me so I can spend most of my time doing what really interests me: R&D for the pharmaceuticals division of our medical supply company.”
Dick’s eyes finally darted back up to his. “Hence the lab in the basement.”
Bruce nodded slowly. “Hence the lab.”
Dick’s foot slid back silently, ready to pivot and turn for speedy exit even as he crossed his arms in front of his chest. “So your lab isn’t just a cover for your torture chamber?”
Bruce raised an eyebrow, but didn’t outright deny the accusation. Instead, he gestured to the seating area: two couches facing each other, with a coffee table in-between them. Bruce took a seat on one, and while Dick refused to sit, he did step closer to stand next to the arm of the other.
“What do you really think I do, Dick?” Bruce asked calmly, hands folded on his lap.
Dick rocked backward on his heels a few times, like he was ready to launch himself away, but jerked his chin up defiantly, eyes burning. “You’re some kind of mob boss or something. A murderer. A sick psycho who kills kids,” he practically spat the words.
“That’s why you don’t like Zucco. He works for one of your rivals or something. Maybe even the rival gang leader who killed your parents. I won’t accept help from someone like you, even to take down Zucco. And I won’t help you either!”
Wayne had turned white as a sheet at the initial accusation, body tensing like he was about to surge to his feet, which the boy had definitely noticed, but with the last words out of Dick’s mouth, the older man went limp, dropping his head into his hands, and giving a slow shake of the head.
“A gang war?” he whispered, wonderingly. “Is that what people think? No. My parents were good people. They were innocent. They were collateral damage.”
Faster than a man of his height or weight should be able to move, Wayne was on his feet. Dick had been waiting for that and reacted in a moment’s notice, rushing for the door, but his legs were shorter, and ate up less ground in each stride than the older man’s.
Dick was yanked back by the arm and spun around, and before he could try to punch or scratch, he was sprayed in the face with something from a small aerosol canister in Wayne’s hand that had been hidden up his shirt cuff.
“Sorry, chum.” His whole body felt stiff and jerky, like his sleep paralysis nightmares. “Have you heard of Fight, Flight, or Freeze? This is Freeze.”
Wayne guided him back to the couch, and Dick just… went. His body didn’t want to react to his commands. It was like his lizard brain recognized there was something dangerous in this room with him, and had seized control in a panic, deciding his best chance of survival was just to go along with whatever it wanted, play possum, and hope it eventually lost interest.
“I didn’t use much, and it’s low potency, so it should wear off soon. I’m sorry, and I hope you’ll forgive me. I just needed you to stay and listen long enough for me to explain.
“Let me tell you, from the beginning.”
“I’m getting old; I think I fell asleep in the theater for a bit there,” Thomas groaned, rolling his neck to crack it while he stretched his arms out in front of him. “Remind me again why we can’t just go straight home?”
“You definitely did,” Martha said, laughing quietly as she patted her husband on the shoulder. “And because I promised we would handle dropping Timothy off.
“But you may still get your wish, since I’m hoping Bruce will work up to the idea of inviting Timothy to stay the night. Cross your fingers!”
The smile faded into a small sigh as she leaned against her husband’s side, watching the two boys walking far enough ahead of them to pretend there wasn’t a parental chaperone, heads tilted towards each other and hands gesturing wildly as they talked animatedly about the movie they’d just seen. Thank God for the Gray Ghost, she thought, the one topic all boys could agree was “the coolest.”
“If I could keep him as my little boy forever, I would, but I know he’s growing up, and it worries me that he’s so uninterested in spending time with anyone his own age. A little boy’s dad should be his hero, not his best friend," she said, chewing on her lip in consternation.
Thomas pulled her closer in comfort with a sigh. "I agree that Bruce needs friends, but does it have to be this one? Jack's harmless—just another man who never outgrew his fraternity days, even if he’s more of a nerd than a jock—but I can't say the same for that snake he married, and I refuse to just sit and smile politely on playdates while she tries to swallow my hospital whole!"
“Tom!” Martha chided, swatting at his side, before huddling back up beside her husband against the chill of the night air and the fog. “Be nice. And I think that's precisely why we should push them together. Janet’s not particularly maternal, and Jack always strikes me as so disinterested! It doesn’t sit right with me the way they rely on nannies and boarding schools. They’re missing the best years of being a parent!”
“Ah, that’s just how the Gotham set’s always done it, Patsy. Jack told me they’re just waiting for Timothy to be old enough, and then they’ll pull him out and take him on a real globe-trotting adventure, do the home-schooling thing for a while. How’s that for exciting? Learning history and language at their source!
“And anyway, all my fraternity brothers were raised by their nannies, and they turned out fine. For that matter, didn’t your parents send your brother off to boarding school?”
Martha gave him a look that clearly stated he was only proving her point for her, and he was forced to concede with a shrug.
“It only seems to me,” she said, “that right now, Timothy could use some friends just as badly.”
“Alright, alright. I guess it’s an opportunity to show off my world-famous ‘eggs in a nest’ at breakfast tomorrow,” he said, a smile twitching at his lips. “But you’ll need to issue the sleepover invitation yourself if you want to make it happen. Our child is many things, but a detective is not one of them!” he laughed. “He doesn’t pick up hints well at all.”
“Good thing I already told the Drake's nanny she could take the night off!” Martha smirked. “Boys?” she called out. “Come here for a second.”
Glancing around, she felt her heart still as she realized she could see nothing but fog. Then it dropped into her stomach at the sound of a whimper.
“Bruce!!”
She took off into the fog at a dead run, Thomas fast on her heels, stopping only when two shapes—one tall and thin, one small and low to the ground—emerged from the fog and resolved themselves into three people.
The first, an unfamiliar man standing and pointing a gun down at the second with an impatient expression on his face. The other, Bruce, with tears in his eyes, silently struggling to tighten a zip tie around the ankles of the Drake boy, who was kneeling on the ground, breath hitched in fear, and hands already zip tied behind his back at the wrists.
Martha screamed, and the man whirled, the flash of the gunfire bright as it reflected off the fog, and then she fell.
Thomas roared, and rushed the man, who couldn’t get the gun up again in time before a blow to the jaw had his vision momentarily sparking with stars. Thomas had been an amateur boxer in college, and the first hit came as enough of a surprise that he dropped the gun in pain. It skittered across the ground and slid under a dumpster.
The second blow sent him to the ground, and then Thomas was on top of him, whaling away like a man possessed.
“Dad! Dad, help me! Mom’s– the blood’s coming so fast! I don’t know what to do!”
Bruce had abandoned Timothy—who had immediately slumped over onto the ground, unable to stand, and was trying to worm-wiggle his way across the filthy alley to prop himself up against the wall—to run to his mother. Even from here, it was easy for Thomas to see how pale her face had gotten, his vision tunneling on the erratic juddering of the pulse in her white throat as his son’s screams for him to help, to do something, to save her became a clamoring ringing in his ears.
Then his vision went entirely black and sound cut out as the man under him crashed half a crumbling brick he’d picked up from the ground into the back of his skull.
Thomas crumpled, and the man shoved the limp body off. Stalking past the boy still sobbing over the now still body of his mother, skirting the pool of blood still spreading around her, he yanked up the Drake kid by the collar of his jacket.
He dragged the kid across the ground towards the dumpster, then dropped him just long enough, after checking that Bruce wasn’t making any moves, to get to his knees and look underneath. The gun was too far to reach. He’d have to move the dumpster to get to it.
Clicking his tongue in annoyance, he tilted his head at the sound of distant sirens, then got back to his feet, throwing the eleven-year old Drake heir over his shoulder like a sack of grain.
Then he walked away, vanishing into the fog and the dark.
Bruce didn’t try to follow, holding onto his mother’s cold hand, and whispering, over and over again, “Dad, Dad, please, help. Help her. Help,” until his voice withered away.
The Drakes, like the Waynes, owned a company in their name: Drake Industries, a medical supply and pharmaceutical company.
And like the Waynes, they mostly left the running of their business in the hands of others while they pursued independent careers. Thomas Wayne as a doctor, and Martha Wayne as a philanthropist on the board of several charities across the city. Jack and Janet Drake, publicly, as amateur archeologists. In actuality, they ran a not-insignificant artifact smuggling operation that started small, just a few trinkets here and there for themselves, and ballooned into something much larger once Jack realized how much interest his friends, and their friends, had in what he brought back, and what they’d be willing to part with to get one of their own—money, favors, insider tips.
But as business savvy and cutthroat as Janet may have been, the world of white-collar crime is still another world entirely from the one they had entered unprepared. And Makenson Innocente did not take kindly to being stiffed and blackmailed for his role in helping them move product through Haiti.
The Drakes’ number one tactic for getting the upper-hand in business negotiations was simply making themselves very difficult to reach. In business as in love, the one who puts in more effort inevitably looks desperate. Juvenile, maybe. But humiliation goes a long way. So the first ransom demand got lost in the shuffle, so to speak.
Until he sent them Tim’s ear.
(Tim had never been reported missing. His nanny, given the night off with Martha’s assurances that they would have him back safely by morning, had gone to spend it with her boyfriend. She hadn’t made it there. Struck by a speeding truck, she’d been hospitalized and placed in a medical coma ever since.
Bruce had never reported that Tim had been with them at all. In fact, he hadn’t spoken a word since the police recovered him with the bodies of his parents at the scene of the crime. It had been assumed to be a mugging gone horribly wrong.)
Jack wanted to get the police involved, send in SWAT. Even better, take half the outrageous sum Innocente was demanding and hire their own mercenaries to take Tim back. Janet wanted to pay quietly so their own illegal activities didn't get exposed. And it was too risky to think they could get Tim out without Innocente killing him first just to spite them if he thought he was about to be caught.
The argument got loud.
When a pair of Gotham’s finest arrived knocking at the penthouse in response to a call about a domestic dispute, they didn’t take kindly to the “do you even know who I am?” routine.
The duffle bag of unmarked bills lying just visible over Jack’s shoulder on the kitchen table was also a pretty enticing target. Civil forfeiture was such a lovely benefit.
“Gotham’s finest” are admittedly not well paid, and the guys at the station thought it was pretty grand to throw “those rich fucks” in the slammer and ignore their increasingly insistent demands, which over the hours devolved into begging pleas, to speak to an officer. New Jersey law allows police to detain someone for 48 hours without pressing charges, after all, and they intended to enjoy the Drakes’ suffering the indignity of every second of it.
Of course, it was only fun and games until Tim Drake’s body was dumped on the steps of Gotham National Bank.
The Drakes were eventually charged and convicted of criminal child neglect, while the cops that bungled the case were put on paid leave, their names kept protected, until the news blew over. There was always some new scandal for the media to salivate over.
And still only Bruce knew the two crimes were connected.
“I wanted revenge. Justice had not been served.
“Learning what the cops allowed to happen to Tim, I knew the only justice to be found was outside the law. And since I didn’t have to limit myself to whatever couldn’t be considered ‘cruel and unusual’ punishment, I knew what I wanted—needed—to be satisfied.
“I needed them to be afraid. Afraid as I was with a gun pointed at my head, as when I sat in the cooling blood of my mother and father. Afraid as Tim must have been those days in that bastard’s company, tortured to death for someone else’s crimes.
“But I was just a kid. Even with all the money in the world, there was very little I could do. Innocente had vanished into the wind.”
“Tim,” Dick said, gaze still settled to the side of Bruce, but he just looked contemplative now, no longer afraid or angry. “That’s his name. He was your friend.”
“Maybe,” Bruce said heavily after a moment’s silence, lost in the past. “I’d have liked to be.”
Dick finally sat down on the couch across from Bruce. “So what did you do?”
“I prepared. My father was a doctor, so it felt in keeping for me to go to school to study biology, chemistry, then later pursue pharmacy school. People said I was following in his footsteps. I acquired Drake Industries for a song.
“Then, when I was ready, I put everything I had learned and all the resources at my disposal together to make a weapon. Not a gun. Not something for killing. Just something to make criminals truly understand what they were putting their victims through. A way to make them feel consequences that actually mean something.”
Dick’s eyes went wide in understanding.
Then he smiled, wider than Bruce had seen since that night up on the trapeze, his eyes sparkling in excitement.
“You said you found Zucco?”
Bruce nodded, pushing himself to his feet, and extending a hand out to Dick.
“I did. Would you like to see my lab?”
Dick placed his hand in Bruce’s larger one and followed him out of the room. His other hand trailed out behind him, fingers partially curled as if in invitation to someone else.
Dick adjusted the baggy hazmat suit’s hood, which resembled nothing so much as a burlap sack, before taking the vial of liquid Bruce handed him, carefully tilting it this way and that to watch how it seemed to shift from green to yellow in the light.
“For what it’s worth,” he said, “I think Tim wanted to be your friend, too. And he’d want to help you with this.”
He went to hand the vial back to Bruce, then hesitated, drawing it back to his chest, holding it in a fist against his heart.
“...So what do you say, B? Could Scarecrow use a sidekick?”